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Haskell Weekly News
http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20080723
Issue 78 - July 23, 2008
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Welcome to issue 78 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the
[1]Haskell community.
Issue 78: In Which Michi and Neil Become Doctors, Sun Donates Some
Sweet Loot, and Jules Is Revealed To Be A Helpful Anthropomorphic Robot
Community News
Congratulations are in order this week to two members of the community
who have completed PhDs. Neil Mitchell (ndm) passed his PhD viva last
week, subject to minor corrections. Mikael Johansson (Syzygy-) [2]has
also completed his PhD and will soon be starting a postdoc at Stanford
with the topology in computer science working group. Congratulations,
Drs. Mitchell and Johansson!
Announcements
rosezipper. Eric Kow (kowey) [3]announced the release of [4]rosezipper,
Krasimir Angelov and Iavor S. Diatchki's Data.Tree implementation of
zippers.
list-extras 0.1.0. wren ng thornton (koninkje) [5]announced the initial
release of [6]list-extras, a home for common not-so-common list
functions.
Sun Microsystems and Haskell.org joint project on OpenSPARC. Duncan
Coutts (dcoutts) [7]announced a [8]joint project between Sun
Microsystems and the Haskell.org community to exploit the high
performance capabilities of Sun's latest multi-core [9]OpenSPARC
systems via Haskell! Sun has donated a powerful 8 core SPARC Enterprise
T5120 Server to the Haskell community, and $10,000 to fund a student
to further develop support for high performance Haskell on the SPARC.
The student will work with a mentor from Haskell.org and an adviser
from Sun's SPARC compiler team. If you're a student and this sounds
interesting to you, send in those applications!!
Hayoo! beta 0.2. Timo B. [10]announced the second beta release of
[11]Hayoo!, a Haskell API search engine providing advanced features
like suggestions, find-as-you-type, fuzzy queries and much more. The
major change in this release is the inclusion of all packages available
on Hackage in the index.
Haskell-beginners mailing list. Benjamin L. Russell [12]announced the
creation of the [13]Haskell-Beginners Mailing List, beginners at
haskell.org, devoted to discussion of primarily beginner-level topics
related to Haskell. It's already off to a great start, so if you're a
Haskell beginner, or someone interested in answering beginner
questions, please subscribe!
Haskeline 0.2. Judah Jacobson [14]announced the initial (alpha-ish)
release of [15]Haskeline, a library for line input in command-line
programs. It is similar in purpose to editline or readline, but is
written in Haskell and thus (hopefully) more easily used in other
Haskell programs.
Google Summer of Code
Progress updates from participants in the 2008 [16]Google Summer of
Code.
Generic tries. Jamie Brandon is working on a library for efficient maps
using generalized tries. [17]This week, he ran QuickCheck on his test
suite for the first time, and found a large number of failing tests!
He's got his work cut out for him straightening those out over the next
few days.
DPH physics engine. Roman Cheplyaka (Feuerbach) is working on a
[18]physics engine using [19]Data Parallel Haskell. [20]This week, he
implemented full handling of rigid body collisions, including angular
velocity. Next he plans to explore various ways to make the engine
faster, including broad-phase collision detection.
GHC plugins. Max Bolingbroke is working on dynamically loaded plugins
for GHC. [21]This week, he revealed his "mystery project": an HTML
pretty-printer for GHC core! [22]Here is a sample. Now his focus turns
to tidying things up and solidifying documentation in preparation for
getting his patches merged into GHC HEAD.
Hoogle 4. Neil Mitchell (ndm) is working on [23]Hoogle 4. [24]This
week, he fleshed out the final part of type search, including support
for instances and alpha renaming of variables. Unfortunately, it uses
too much memory to be feasibly run on the base libraries! Neil has some
ideas on how to fix this, however, which he plans to tackle next week.
Language.C. Benedikt Huber (visq) is [25]working on Language.C, a
standalone parser/pretty printer library for C99. He has finally
completed a working implementation for analysing declarations and
definitions, and [26]presents a working example of the library's use.
Cabal dependency framework. Andrea Vezzosi (Saizan) is working on a
[27]make-like dependency analysis framework for Cabal.
GHC API. Thomas Schilling (nominolo) is working on [28]improvements to
the GHC API.
Libraries
Proposals and extensions to the [29]standard libraries.
generalize mapAccumL/R. Ross Paterson [30]proposed adding generalized
versions of mapAccumL and mapAccumR to Data.Traversable.
signal-handling API. Simon Marlow [31]proposed a [32]new
signal-handling API.
Discussion
Point-free style in guards. L29Ah [33]asked a question about using a
points-free style in guard expressions, leading to a number of clever
suggestions involving custom combinators.
Optimizing sequence. Gracjan Polak started a [34]discussion on the
strictness properties of the sequence function, and its implications
for optimization. It sounds as though adding an alternate strict
version of sequence to the libraries could be a good idea.
Blog noise
[35]Haskell news from the [36]blogosphere.
* Eric Kow (kowey): [37]rose zipper on hackage. Eric has uploaded an
implementation of a zipper for Data.Tree to hackage.
* Jamie Brandon: [38]QuickCheck strikes again. An update on Jamie's
Google Summer of Code project. Lots of failing QuickCheck tests
mean Jamie has his work cut out for him.
* >>> Ayumilove: [39]Haskell Programming Tutorial Part 1. A video
introduction to Haskell?
* Roman Cheplyaka (Feuerbach): [40]Status report: week 7-8. An update
on Roman's Google Summer of Code project.
* Conal Elliott (conal): [41]Designing for the future.
* Benedikt Huber (visq): [42]Language.C: Analysing Definitions. An
update on Benedikt's Google Summer of Code project.
* Max Bolingbroke: [43]Compiler Plugins For GHC: Week Six. An update
on Max's Google Summer of Code project.
* Arnar Birgisson (Arnar): [44]Playing with Haskell's lazy lists.
Arnar implements Eric Rowland's [45]simple prime-generating
recurrence using lazy lists in Haskell.
* Neil Mitchell (ndm): [46]GSoC Hoogle: Week 8. An update on Neil's
Google Summer of Code project.
* Matthew Sackman: [47]What is the point?. Matthew had his submission
rejected from the Haskell Symposium, and isn't happy about it.
* Tupil: [48]Stemming with Haskell reloaded. An updated, more
functional/Haskellish interface to the stemmer library.
* Luke Palmer (luqui): [49]Semantic Design. Luke's reflections on a
design approach learned from Conal Elliott.
* Muad`Dib (vixey): [50]Rascal - Mini-haskell like language.
* Jeremy Shaw: [51]HTML Templating in HAppS using HSP. Jeremy writes
a very cool introduction/tutorial to using HSP (Haskell Server
Pages) with HAppS.
* >>> Duane Johnson: [52]Lazy Evaluation at Work. Duane likes the
idea of lazy file I/O.
* >>> Duane Johnson: [53]A Glimmer of Monadic Hope. Duane figures out
do-notation.
* >>> Duane Johnson: [54]Using 'foldr' in Haskell. Duane figures out
how to define (++) and concat in terms of foldr.
* Mikael Johansson (Syzygy-): [55]Dr rer nat, Magna cum laude.
* >>> Holden Karau: [56]Integrating your HUnit (or other) tests into
your cabal package.
* Real-World Haskell: [57]Beta availability hiccups.
* >>> Antoine Hersen: [58]ICFP 2008 Postmortem.
* Edward Kmett (edwardk): [59]A Sort of Difference. Edward uses an
analysis of quicksort in Haskell as a jumping-off point for an
introduction to difference lists.
* Ralf Lammel: [60]The Expression Lemma -- Explained. Ralf explains
the relationship between OOP and FP.
* >>> Greg McClure: [61]Learning languages through problem-solving.
Greg extols the virtues of [62]Project Euler for learning new
languages, and exhibits a solution to the first problem in Haskell,
Erlang, and Python.
Quotes of the Week
* kryptiskt: my point is that our brain isn't some logic machine,
it's a jury-rigged contraption to help us get food, friends and
sex. It's the Perl of intelligences.
* Fallacy: peyton `simon` jones
* Quadrescence: [on #haskell] Well, the nice population here attracts
people. Unlike other pla_C_es. How'd those underscores get there?
* mauke: hmm, regexes get even more cryptic after z-encoding:
ZLz3fUZCZLz3fUzlznzrwZRZLz3fUzezrwZRzbZLz3fUzlzezrwZRZLz3fUznzrwZRZ
R
* BMeph: Haskell: Where even the newest newcomer acts monadically:
join :: ask (ask something) -> ask something
* Quadrescence: quicksilver: You must be an anthropomorphic robot or
something.
About the Haskell Weekly News
New editions are posted to [63]the Haskell mailing list as well as to
[64]the Haskell Sequence and [65]Planet Haskell. [66]RSS is also
available, and headlines appear on [67]haskell.org. Headlines are
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To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the
information on [69]how to contribute. Send stories to byorgey at seas
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[70]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/ .
References
1. http://haskell.org/
2. http://blog.mikael.johanssons.org/archive/2008/07/dr-rer-nat-magna-cum-laude/
3. http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2008/07/rose-zipper-on-hackage.html
4. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/rosezipper
5. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/42485
6. http://code.haskell.org/~wren/
7. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16351
8. http://haskell.org/opensparc/
9. http://opensparc.net/
10. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16349
11. http://holumbus.fh-wedel.de/hayoo
12. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16345
13. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
14. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16343
15. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/haskeline
16. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/wiki/SoC2008
17. http://jamiiecb.blogspot.com/2008/07/quickcheck-strikes-again.html
18. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hpysics
19. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/Data_Parallel_Haskell
20. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/07/status-report-week-7-8.html
21. http://blog.omega-prime.co.uk/2008/07/21/compiler-plugins-for-ghc-week-six/
22. http://www.omega-prime.co.uk/files/GHC-Core-HTML.html
23. http://code.haskell.org/hoogle/
24. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2008/07/gsoc-hoogle-week-8.html
25. http://www.sivity.net/projects/language.c/wiki/
26. http://hsbene.blogspot.com/2008/07/languagec-analysing-definitions.html
27. http://code.haskell.org/~Saizan/cabal
28. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/GhcApiStatus
29. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions
30. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/9649
31. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/9599
32. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/2451
33. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/42475
34. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/42453
35. http://planet.haskell.org/
36. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blog_articles
37. http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2008/07/rose-zipper-on-hackage.html
38. http://jamiiecb.blogspot.com/2008/07/quickcheck-strikes-again.html
39. http://www.5min.com/Video/Ayumilove-Haskell-Programming-Tutorial-Part-1-31180892
40. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/07/status-report-week-7-8.html
41. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/conal/~3/342784118/
42. http://hsbene.blogspot.com/2008/07/languagec-analysing-definitions.html
43. http://blog.omega-prime.co.uk/2008/07/21/compiler-plugins-for-ghc-week-six/
44. http://www.hvergi.net/2008/07/playing-with-haskells-lazy-lists/
45. http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/07/rutgers-graduate-student-finds-new.html
46. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2008/07/gsoc-hoogle-week-8.html
47. http://www.wellquite.org/what_is_the_point.html
48. http://blog.tupil.com/stemming-with-haskell-reloaded/
49. http://luqui.org/blog/archives/2008/07/18/semantic-design/
50. http://muaddibspace.blogspot.com/2008/07/rascal-mini-haskell-like-language.html
51. http://nhlab.blogspot.com/2008/07/html-templating-in-happs-using-hsp.html
52. http://blog.inquirylabs.com/2008/07/18/lazy-evaluation-at-work/
53. http://blog.inquirylabs.com/2008/07/17/a-glimmer-of-monadic-hope/
54. http://blog.inquirylabs.com/2008/07/17/using-foldr-in-haskell/
55. http://blog.mikael.johanssons.org/archive/2008/07/dr-rer-nat-magna-cum-laude/
56. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/holdenkarau/iYtm/~3/337908379/integrating-your-hunit-or-other-tests.html
57. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2008/07/16/beta-availability-hiccups/
58. http://endymion2021.livejournal.com/17117.html
59. http://comonad.com/reader/2008/a-sort-of-difference/
60. http://blogs.msdn.com/ralflammel/archive/2008/07/16/the-expression-lemma-explained.aspx
61. http://www.codechops.com/?p=15
62. http://www.projecteuler.net/
63. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
64. http://sequence.complete.org/
65. http://planet.haskell.org/
66. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed
67. http://haskell.org/
68. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/archives/20080723.pdf
69. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN
70. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/